Powered By

Identifying the real election day issue

Pennsylvania's attempt to scrap centuries of American tradition in order to enable politicians to choose voters, rather than vice-versa, is now in court.

But even if judges uphold the new voter ID law, this big government solution in search of a problem -- voter impersonations occur less often than volcanic eruptions in Pennsylvania -- already has been exposed as a nakedly partisan power grab.

No less an authority than state GOP leader Mike Turzai recently announced (oops) that the new voter IDs should help Mitt Romney, the noted Anglo-Saxon, carry Pennsylvania in November.

Perhaps Turzai had seen state data suggesting that 43 percent of voters in Philadelphia could in effect be disenfranchised by the new law.

On November 6, "it is highly likely that voting systems will fail in multiple places across the country," says a new study by the Common Cause Education Fund, the Verified Voting Foundation and the Rutgers School of Law-Newark.